10.46: Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep - podcast episode cover

10.46: Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep

Apr 05, 202542 minSeason 10Ep. 46
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This week on MSB: Victory Gundam episode 46. Kagatie's sinister plan is finally revealed (It's babies. Of course it's babies) and two characters surprise us by winning our (grudging) support. Plus Marbet's fighting for two, Fuala's fighting for the fun of it, and Uso is fighting for his life. Please listen to it!

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Transcript

You're listening to season 10 of Mobile Suit Breakdown, a weekly podcast covering the entirety of sci fi mega franchise Mobile suit Gundam from 1979 to today. This is episode 10.46. Now I lay me down to sleep and we're your hosts. I'm Tom, longtime Gundam enjoyer, and when I go out to a steakhouse, I like to order the Tasseled Wagyu Beef Surprise. The surprise is a coup d'etat attempt. During dinner, and I'm Nina, new to. Victory Gundam, and I really was not.

Expecting to agree with Tassel's Wagyu ever stopped clocks. Am I right folks? Yeah. Critical support for Tasilo this episode, Mobile. Suit Breakdown, is made possible by our. Handsome and hearty paying subscribers. Thank you all and special thanks to. Our newest patrons, Chris DG and Colin. R. You keep us, Genki.

This week we are covering Victory Episode 46. Tashiro Hanran, aka Tasilo's Mutiny Writer Goto Kazuhiko, storyboard artist Kase Mitsuko and director Sato Ikuro all make their final contributions to Victory Gundam this week. The animation was directed by Itakura Kazuhiko and Shinbo Takuro. There will be no research piece this week, but next week we'll interrupt our regular Victory narrative for a deep dive on the biblical passages that inspired the Angel Halo with the aid of a new guest, Wheels Wheeler. If you get to the end of this episode and find yourself thinking, hey, why didn't they talk more about the Angel Halo? Well, that's why. Then in two weeks, we'll return with a regular episode of msb, including another installment in our series on the history of Yugoslavia. But for now, the Recap.

The battle drags on. The White Ark receives a delivery of mobile suits and parts for the Buster Gundam upgrade. And in spite of the lack of nearby reinforcements, USO wants to go get Shaak Ti now before Zanskar can organize their remaining forces around Angel Halo. Odello and Tomash agree, and perhaps because she knows she can't stop them, Marbet allows it. On the Shubaten, Shaakti agrees to be a symbol of the Zanskar Empire after Wago explains that in this role she can unite the hearts of the people so that Zanskar can bring peace to the world without having to use the guillotine. Embracing her new position, Shakti orders Wago to strengthen the defense of Angel Halo and to rendezvous with Chronicles Adrastea so she can confer with her uncle. He is happy to oblige, ordering Farah to escort the princess to Chronicle's ship while the Subaten sets a course for Angel Halo. Chronicle is surprised but pleased to learn that Shaak Ti has finally agreed to inherit Maria's role, but laughs when Shakti has one condition, the destruction of Angel Halo. Despite not knowing exactly what it does, she can tell it's dangerous, that there is madness in it. She has also learned that her mother is Kagati's puppet and wants to know where do Chronicle's loyalties lie? What is he hoping to achieve? Ignoring her questions, he tells her to rest and is on his way out the door when Shakti grabs his sidearm from its holster, points it at him and finds fires, hitting Chronicle in the arm. Rushing in at the sound of the gunshot, Katajina disarms Shakti and knocks her unconscious, but Chronicle orders her not to kill the princess. Maria's daughter is too potentially useful. Assured that reinforcements are just moments away, Connie, Yuuka and Marbett take to the battlefield. Far out of sight, Uso is deep into Zanskar controlled space, fighting his way through the enemy fleets and toward Angel Halo. With the upgraded Buster Gundam guns, Uso destroys a distant ship. He is instantly beset by a sound like innumerable people screaming. The next moment, he hears Marbett's voice in his head, as clear as if they were speaking face to face. The Lyndhorse Jr. Is linking up with the rest of the League Militaire fleet and will be arriving soon. Then Farah finds him and there is no more time to think. Marbit worries that Uso, Odello and Tomash will be surrounded, cut off and outnumbered. While Connie and Yuka cover her, Marbet beelines for a nearby cluster of ships. Tassilo's fleet. Knowing that Shaak Ti might be aboard the flagship, she targets one of the supporting vessels, flying toward it at full speed, ejecting at the last moment. The bubble suit crashes just below the bridge, setting off a cascade of explosions that destroy the whole ship. Tassilo's fleet is collapsing. He orders the Shubaten's captain to get them to Angel Halo now, and Pharah falls back. USO following Angel Halo is in use once more, but this time its prayers are being sent to Earth, where affected people and animals stop in their tracks and lie down asleep. When he arrives, Tasilo wastes no time. He forces Kagati at gunpoint to take him to the Key Room, shooting anyone who tries to stop them. On the way, he tells Kagati he intends to destroy Angel Halo and to force Kagati to step down aboard the Adrastia. Chronicle sees that Angel Halo is offline and suspects something has gone wrong. He rushes to check on the situation himself. Still holding Cagati hostage, Tassilo tries to explain to Maria that by putting people in an infantile state, Angel Halo will cause mass death. But the Queen of Zanskar seems unconvinced. Angel Halo couldn't possibly be that powerful. Chronicle arrives in the middle of this tense confrontation, but in the ensuing confusion, Tasilo swaps one hostage for another. Flinging Cagati at Chronicle and grabbing hold of Maria, he shoots his way out and makes his escape in the Shubaten. Meanwhile, USO and Pharah have made it to Angel Halo, and Chronicle announces his intention to put Shaakti in the key room.

If I may be permitted to, let's say, gloat a little bit, I do want to point out that when I researched Tassilo's name some months ago now, I identified a Bavarian duke, Tassilo iii, who fell afoul of Charlemagne and was dispossessed of his duchy as a result of that. And I identified him as the, I thought most likely inspiration for Tassilo Wagyu's name. And I would like to say that I think this episode confirms that in my mind, because one of the things that Duke Tassilo III was accused of doing that got him in so much trouble with the king, or else, you know, accusations that were ginned up after the fact in order to legitimize Charlemagne's power grab, was the fact that he allegedly withdrew from an active military campaign on a thin pretext in order to keep himself and his men out of the fighting. And in this episode, amidst various fleet maneuvers and exciting battles, Tassilo does exactly that. He pretends to be so afraid of the unrelenting Ligue Militaire assault and orders his ship and his fleet to flee fall back steadily until they reach the Angel Halo, all as part of a cunning ploy.

First, I have to ask, is space madness catching? Because there are a few moments where Tassilo seems a bit Pharah, like in his demeanor, something that is noticed by the captain of his ship, the captain of the Shubaten Commander Captain, probably. It's always safe going with captain, since it can mean like one of three different things. Anyway, Tassilo has to reassure this man that, oh, I'm with it, I have all my faculties, I'm clear headed, I. Know what I'm doing, I'm just playing a ruse.

I just break out into Evil laughter sometimes. Now, don't worry about it. But the real kicker of all of this for me is that he's right. First of all, how does Kagati not have any inkling that he is vulnerable to a coup? That just seems like bad planning.

Well, everyone who has ever fallen victim to a coup trusted the wrong person. He thought he had Tassilo under his thumb. He thought Tassilo was a clown that he could just lead around, throw pies at, make, wear extra large trousers. You know, standard clown stuff. But most of what Tassilo has to say from the time that he arrives at Angel Halo, captures Cagati, captures Maria, is one, Cagaty can't be trusted. Absolutely correct. Duh. And.

Or, hello, proven over and over and over again. Two, you must never be more than a figurehead queen. This is basically the argument behind the change in Japan's own monarchy after World War II, that vesting one person with this kind of absolute power is unacceptably dangerous for society, for humanity, and it cannot be allowed.

Well, this is like the attempted coup right before the surrender in World War II, when a bunch of hardline fight to the last man, Japanese army officers raided the Imperial palace, trying to capture the recording of the Emperor's surrender declaration before it could be broadcast.

Well, the Angel Halo makes literal what is often used as sort of a figurative expression to describe a particularly powerful and charismatic leader, which is that she can order people to lay down and die and they will do it. Mm. She doesn't seem to believe that that's true. And yet it sure seems to be. It sure seems to be. Those poor cattle were going to sleep, as were all the people.

Yeah, the bit where Tasilo mentions that they will sleep for one year felt oddly specific. Was that some previously unexplained part of the plan, that the Angel Halo in close proximity to Earth will put everybody to sleep for exactly one year or something. Like a fairy tale curse. Well, for a fairy tale curse, it should be a year and a day.

But I don't know that the length of time is necessarily significant, except in that it is enough time for anything to die. They dance around saying, they'll die a lot. It will make them like infants. It will make them sleep. But instead of saying, yeah, and then they'll die. Right.

Tasiila's like, but you understand the implications of this course of action, do you not, your Highness? And that seems odd. Significant perhaps, because this is a Gundam show. We've witnessed many people die. They can't possibly be squeamish about talking about people dying. And yet perhaps this episode is. We get two different apologies from Marbet and USO when they gun down opposing mobile suits, like, oop, my bad. Sorry about this.

Yeah, well, and uso, when he fires the long gun instead of the wide gun, says, like, it's such a pointless death, and then blasts away. But I don't think that's what's going on here. I think it's more that they're like they. And by this I mean the writers actually do want the audience to be the one doing the implicative. The implicative leap from, oh, they'll become like babies to yeah, and a baby that doesn't have somebody to care for, it will die.

What is almost darker to me is that Maria does not realize that she's effectively asking the same of the psychikers. She's asking them to engage in a kind of living death. And the key chamber looks like a torture device, doesn't it? The way all of these, like oversized hypodermic needles are pointed towards the center. It looks like an iron maiden. It looks like Maria is going to be jabbed from all directions.

And she tells them, after you abandon your individual passions, you shall know peace. To me, that reads like, once you aren't yourself anymore, once you are no longer a person, this won't hurt. Once you're a human battery for my mind control device.

And they talk about the victims of the angel halo in similarly euphemistic tones. They can't even say, oh, they're all going to become like babies. Cagaty has to frame that as, yes, they're going to become the ultimate form of life that yearns for peace with the idea that that's what a baby is. A baby is the ultimate form of peace, yearning life. Which I don't know that that's true. And certainly little kids have no enthusiasm for peace. Well defined peace. Right?

Peace and quiet. Peace, as in not hitting their sibling. Well, sure, but I imagine most kids would be pro the kind of peace where they don't have to worry about getting shot or bombed or their parents being shot or bombed.

Yeah, but that's again, coming from a place of selfishness. Like, they don't value peace in the abstract. They value not being hurt, which, yeah, sure, most of us do. But way, way back in one of the first episodes, I remember thinking that the show was equating the desire for war with childishness, with the desire to sort of play around without consequences, at least as it was being expressed by these Zanskar soldiers. And I think that's still true. Like the show treats this war very much like a kid punching another kid and taking his lunch money. That it is a violent action done for personal gain.

It's pretty clear in this case that Kagati wanting to render everyone babies has less to do with peace and more to do with rendering everyone weak and powerless and dependent on their mother. Zanskar and Maria. It is really interesting that this desire to make everyone into babies doesn't come from Maria. She accepts it. She seems happy to do it. But it's Cagati who originates the idea. The representation of patriarchal authority in the show is the one who wants to infantilize everyone.

What was a bit of a kicker for me is that we have repeatedly over the course of the series been frustrated by Shakti's naivete, that she thinks she can just explain things to people and they will obviously understand and agree with her about the rational course of action or that she can make an emotional or relationship based appeal and they will listen to her. And now all of a sudden, she sees the danger of the angel Halo. She understands that her mother is Kagati's puppet. She understands that Chronicle has some other goal here, but she doesn't yet know what it is. Suddenly she's so savvy.

I love the line where she's like, Chronicle, there's something up with you. What are you up to? I would love to know that too, Shakti. I would love for that plot line to develop. What is Chronicle updo? Mr. Tomino, do you want to tell us? Do you want to tell the class?

It just feels very sudden, like that can happen for a person, that all of the pieces suddenly fall into place and something they've struggled to understand for a long time is suddenly crystal clear to them. But it felt a little out of nowhere to me here. Well, Shakti just hasn't had that much screen time or that many lines. She hasn't had the opportunity to show that development as it's been happening.

And she makes one fundamental but very easy to make mistake, which is that you really shouldn't point a gun at somebody unless you want to kill them. Oh, I don't know that we can hold that against her. People in this episode are always pointing guns at other people they don't really intend to kill. Solid respect to Tasilo. His trigger discipline is very impressive. No, I loved that scene with Shakti Chronicle and eventually Katagina Chronicle. Not taking it personally when I first.

Saw it and the camera zooms in on Chronicle's handgun as he's talking about how the angel halo could they hang. A lampshade on it, exude waves of peace? What do they hang a lampshade on? On the gun. On the fact that Shaak Ti's gonna go for a gun.

Oh, okay. See, I didn't think Shakti was going to go for it until she did. That caught me by surprise. I thought they were just doing a very ham fisted. Like Chronicle is talking about the angel halo blanketing the battlefield in peace. Meanwhile, look at his gun on his hip that he's carrying. Look at this soldier talking about peace. What a hypocrite. No, when Shakti goes for it, I was like, yes, Shakti, do something. I understand.

Do something good. You have the opportunity to do the funniest thing.

I understood the crosscut from Shakti to the gun to be like, oh, Shakti is looking at that gun. Shakti is no longer asking. So this scene leaps and bounds of development for Shakti. Katajina, however, seems to be almost regressing or at the very least refusing to grow up. Because somehow people around her are trying to talk about geopolitics and she's talking about, ugh, if you annoying kids would just leave me personally alone, everything in the world would be fine.

Well, she didn't shoot her. She didn't shoot Shaak Ti. That's growth, right? Is it? Well, most of what we've seen of Katajina has been how much she loves blasting away. She loves shooting the guns. She expends more ammo than any other pilot in the entire Zanskar Empire. And here she is with a meddling kid right in front of her and a handgun in her fist. But it would make Chronicle sad.

He ordered her specifically not to do it. I'm not sure she cares about Chronicle being sad, but he gave her very explicit orders. No, she definitely cares about him being sad. When Chronicle is sad, she has to like stroke his fluffy hair and tell him that it's all gonna be okay. She's his emotional support. Murderous.

I was trying to think of something to say other than murderous praetorian. She's like his praetorian guard, lackey, flunky, hench pilot. Anyway, when Pharah is taxiing Shaak Ti from the Shubhaten over to the, I guess, last surviving motorad battleship, the Adoustiya, to see Chronicle, she keeps saying the princess. The Princess. And then laughing. Did you have a read on that?

Because I have a suspicion I Can speculate. But no, I didn't have a particular read. Beyond. Farah's got that space madness. She does have that space madness. Pharah has become battlesexual. We have encountered battle sexuals in this show before. Kiara. Yeah. Kiara. Soon.

And there have definitely been others. Yazan. But I think Pharah can sense the turmoil in Shakti's heart. I think Phara can sense that Shakti is about to start something. Shakti's gonna start some chaos. And Farah loves chaos now. She loves chaos as much as she used to love drinking wine and hanging all over her pilot.

She might also simply recognize that introducing the princess into this already volatile situation will make it more regardless of Shakti's intentions or thoughts about the matter and be similarly excited about the impending chaos. Pharah sowing. Hahaha. This rules. Farah reaping. Hahaha. This rules even more. I really liked the undulating red strings around USO as a sort of psychic stress metaphor.

The red strings show up again at the very end of the episode when Pharah has just landed a nasty hit on him. And they are right outside of Andriel Halo. So there. It could be the fear and intensity of that situation. Or it could be the proximity to all those psychikers. I also noticed when Marbett uses her Gundam as a bomb. When she uses it to take out a cruiser, she ejects. But not in a Core fighter. She ejects in, like a little escape pod that I don't think we've ever seen before.

We've seen them on Zanskar mobile suits. We haven't seen them on League Militaire or Federation mobile suits.

Right? Certainly not on the Victory Gundam that Marbette is piloting. So I thought that was interesting. Maybe doubly so. Because while the core fighter is like an integral part of the mobile suit body, this little ejection capsule feels more like, I don't know, like a fetus relative to the body of a pregnant woman. Maybe that's going a little far out on a limb. But let's remember the flying psychic space Baby T from Char's Counterattack. Not the first time Tomino has done something like this.

I can't entirely remember. But the other uses of a similar escape pod that stand out the most to me in the series have been by Lupe by Pharah. So it seems impossible that we haven't also seen a man do it at some point. But the most recent examples and the ones that come to my mind first when I Think Sink Back are all these women who've rejected motherhood. So that's interesting.

Hmm. Stroking my chin. Hmm. Also thought it was really interesting that most of the time when Maria is depicted in the Key Chamber, especially when she's praying, the camera is set up so that her face is blocked. There are these rings that surround her when she's in the Key Chamber, and they're sort of at the cardinal directions. One directly in front of her, one behind, and one to either side. But they could easily have drawn her from a different angle or drawn those rings in different positions. It is a conscious choice to obscure her face, obscure her personality when she's in the chamber, or just to make.

Her easier to draw. Well, yes, I mean, there is that. I have heard that's why they used beam rotors instead of like conventional helicopter rotors on the Zolos all the way back at the beginning, because beam rotors disappear when you turn them off, and so it would be slightly easier on the animators. Did you notice that all of the operators of the Angel Halo all wear the ceremonial robes and wigs that we saw on her various attendants previously? So they're like priests?

Oh, yeah. And the Angel Halo is an explicitly religion of Maria device.

They're not physically touching her, but all the work they do directly, like, affects her psyche, her body. So it makes sense that even these control panel operators would need to be properly attired in order to attend the Queen. When Tasilo is talking to Kagati and they have this back and forth about, like, I won't be your clown. Is that what you think I think of you? I think this harkens back to all of the times Char Aznabal complained about acting as a clown when he felt compelled to behave like a politician. So both in the Day of Dakar episode of Zeta Gundam and then during Char's Counterattack, he refers to himself as, oh, I feel like a clown. Am I just a clown to you? And remember that Tasilo has on his flagship a very nearly perfect recreation of Shar Aznabal's moping chamber from Sweetwater in Shar's Counterattack. And also does his hair exactly like Shar and rather looks like him. Like, if you bleached Tassila's hair blonde, he would be indistinguishable from a Shar's Counterattack era.

Shar Tassila lacks the Shar energy, though He's a Shar fanboy. He wants to be Ash, but he's not the Shar. Oh, that is a devastating thing you just said about him, he is never going to recover from that. Nina, how could you be so cruel?

It seems like what Tassilo really objects to is being treated like a puppet, being treated like Maria. That Tasilo believes, for whatever reason, that Kagati ought to include him in his confidence and respect him as a commander, as a man, as someone with his own power base and potential to influence the politics of Zanskar. And instead he believes Kagati has tried to create a situation where he can force Tassilo to do whatever he wants, just as now he basically forces Maria to do whatever he wants, even if it's all couched in like, kind explanations and requests.

Tassilo wants to rule Zahn Scar, a mighty space empire, and he's gotten his way up to very nearly the pinnacle of the organization of the hierarchy. And he finds out that the people on the top are like true believer cultists who want to wipe out the human race. That will really, really hamper his plans to rule the empire.

Or he finds out that the people at the pinnacle have no intention, not just of including him, of widening the circle so he can join it. They're not even willing to make him their successors, to take him into their confidence as a future leader after they're gone. No, no, they have no interest in sharing their power. And that is unacceptable to him.

Do you think Kagati actually wants to kill everybody? Is he deluded? Does he think he'll be able to finesse this somehow? Like they'll become infantile, but only for a little while. And then I think he believes that he can finesse it long enough that it won't matter, that by the time Maria realizes what she has actually done, it will be done and she won't be able to stop it or undo it.

At various points in the episode, it's a little unclear whether Maria doing this will like, kill everybody on Earth or kill everybody. I absolutely believe that Kagasse wants to kill everybody on Earth, and he thinks. They'Ll have enough control over it so as not to kill everybody everywhere, all at once.

Especially if, as Chronicle says, the plan is to take the Angel Halo to Earth, because then they wouldn't need to transmit so strongly. They could just kind of move region to region over the Earth, transmitting more gently and affecting just people on Earth rather than willy nilly through space. Whereas Tasilo seems to be saying, okay, yeah, but you've got 10,000 psychikers here. You have put too many megatons into the bomb. You are going to crack the planet. You are going to kill everybody.

Perhaps the real problem here in terms of Maria's understanding is that as she points out, oh, the angel halo can't physically restrain anybody. Which may well be true. However, if you remove people's desire to live, they just lay down and die. She hasn't made the connection between that passive infantile state or the state of not having any personal desires or any aggression whatsoever. She hasn't realized that that means people just won't live. And then we have the Shrikes who are fighting throughout all of this. I consider Connie asking Marbet about her condition and how she's feeling and Marbet being like, oh, I feel fine. I still can't quite believe it. Confirmation that Marbet is in fact Gregnant Pregnert pregnant.

Yes, yes. Which appears to activate in the Shrikes some kind of hyper aggressive mama bear mode which the other Shrikes all universally approve of. Girl power, I guess, Gals being pals. The power of momb. I mean, it's very in keeping with the thesis of this show that when you put an actual mom or mom to be in the field, all of the capital G, capital W, good women rally around her and become her like bodyguard.

Except that they don't tell her, go back to the ship. They don't tell her, go keep yourself safe. And it seems to me that the show is making a case for motherhood, giving women something good to fight for, something that's like healthy to fight for instead of unhealthy sources of aggression. In the case of Lupe or Farah, because she's fighting now to protect her unborn baby, she's fighting for a better world for her future child.

Yeah, the show is definitely invested in this idea of the sacred and essential role of motherhood. The indispensability of motherhood to making a woman like complete again. See the Lupe stuff, but it's not committed to the idea that women can only be mothers or that motherhood is an all consuming vocation. It's not advocating for the stay at.

Home mother Tomino's evolving. Like, okay, okay, I guess it's not ruinous for society if mothers work. But all these women who aren't becoming mothers, deeply suspicious.

Well, yeah, it feels like this episode especially. But the show as a whole operates on the premise that life is a series of stages. Infancy, childhood, being a teenager, young adulthood, adulthood, old age, death. That's not controversial, but the show seems to feel that adulthood for women must involve childrearing. That if you avoid it you are refusing to take the step from young adulthood to into adulthood. So the shrikes are fine because they're still young adults and they're not actively refusing to take that next step. Lupe, either because she didn't want to or she didn't find the right man, which somehow is her fault. Lupe refuses to make that transition and it messes her up really badly. It turns her into this monster. And then once you're an adult, once you're a parent, you then also have to transition into post parenthood, letting your child go. This is the thing that USO's dad is struggling with. And it's why it's so crucial that he's getting advice from an older man, old enough to be his father, a man who has already gone through this process.

I have one small quibble with your theory, which is that I would say the show's position is that yes, you can be an adult without xyz, without having children, without doing this and that, but that it will mess up your psychological development in some way. Like it almost harms you, causes neuroses, I don't know, like the desire to avoid moving through these natural stages is in itself like a kind of mental illness. And then that the act of refusing to move through these stages in the quote unquote natural way causes like psychoses or something. It's kind of gross.

But that is also why what they're trying to do with the angel halo is so wrong. Because trying to arrest everyone's development, to prevent them from growing beyond the stage of infancy is itself an interruption of the necessary cycle of life, a perversion of the natural course of things.

And I couldn't help but think about the contrast between the colonies and Earth. All of those scenes of the Clancy sisters first visits to Earth and their reactions to it. And that Meria and Zanskar don't understand the Earth as an ecology, as a complex and incredibly inconceivably complex environment of interconnected living things. They think of it just like a really big colony. And so of course, they don't see the danger of, oh, we'll just wipe out everything. We'll just wipe out everything that's alive and then we can add our own people and everything will be fine. Right? That won't. It'll still be Earth, it'll still be big and beautiful. Right? Will it?

Probably a lot more plants. Do you think only mammals are affected by the angel halo? Like, what creatures? Because if all living things are affected. By the angel halo, yeah, I guess. Anything with a central nervous system. That's a lot of things. Yeah, granted, certainly not close to the majority of things. All the bacteria would be okay, and the insects and the plants and tardigrades. Are probably going to be fine. Tardigrades are always fine. That is a lot of dead creatures. And.

But as established in the prior episode, Maria believes it is okay to kill animals. Right. Killing animals is a morally neutral act. But they don't understand what killing the animals will do to this environment that they admire for its beauty. Also, don't kill animals without a good reason. That is bad. I agree with you, but I find. Your refusal to condemn the killing of animals deeply troubling.

It's worth Remembering the early 90s were, at least in the United States and I imagine in Japan, too, a time when a lot of environmental issues were very prominent and discussed in the news and in public discourse. Things about the ozone layer, the pollution of the oceans, overfishing, whaling. A number of environmental issues were getting a lot of attention. And my earliest science education was mostly about Earth as, like, this complex, interconnected system. We talked about how rainwater filters through the ground soil and then into aquifers and then into rivers and streams and then the ocean, and then how the storms come off of the ocean because of the water vapor. You know, the interconnectedness of all these systems. So to have your villains be people who completely lack any understanding of that, for good reason. They've never lived in it, but who then want to take the Earth for themselves is pretty significant.

You brought my mind back to the Clansky sisters and their initial revulsion when faced with the smells, the messiness of life on Earth. And I keep thinking back to that line Warren says, which is really shaping up to be the thesis of the show, that you should endeavor to live well and die naturally. Like, live your life well and then die in the natural course of things. And return to the Earth where you will feed insects and enrich soil and feed plants and.

And that line of thinking can lead you down a dark path. It can lead you to, you know, vaccine denialism. It can lead you to devalue human life and not take steps to preserve it. But it can also, I think, teach you a very important respect for nature and the limits of our power and the bad things that can happen when we try to preserve our own happiness and comfort and life at all costs. And the pain that we can inflict on ourselves when we reject the inevitable, that we will all one day die.

Take it back a step. Don't even go all the way to death. You have to accept the inevitability that you will grow up, you will change, your life will change, the world around you will change. Those changes are a natural part of life. You will grow out of infancy, you will grow out of childhood, you will. Grow out of parenthood. Eventually your kids will grow up and become adults themselves. And you need to be able to let go.

Next time on episode 1046 B 10.46 Part 2 we bring in special guest Wheels to talk in depth about the possible biblical influences for the Angel Halo. Please listen to it.

Mobile Suit Breakdown is written, recorded and produced by us, Tom and Nina in scenic New York City within the ancestral and unceded land of the Lenape people and made possible by listeners like you. The opening track is Wasp by Misha Dioxin. The closing music is Long Way Home by Spinning Ratio. The recap music is Slow by Lloyd Rogers. You can find links to the sources for our research, the music used in the episode, additional information about the Lenape people, and more in the show notes on our website gundampodcast.com if you'd like to get in touch with us, you can email hostsundampodcast.com or look for links to our social media accounts on our website. And if you would like to support the show, please share us with your friends. Leave a nice review wherever you listen to podcasts or support us [email protected] Patreon you can find links and more ways to help [email protected] support thank you for listening.

Have we called him Tassels before? Because I put that in my hand. Also, and it's no, we definitely have. I was going to say it was very funny that we both made almost the same joke.

That failed and this appears to be succeeding, at least for the moment. And that was about wanting to keep the war going instead of wanting to end it. But. Well, I guess actually in this case it is that Tassilo wants the war to keep going kind of as it is, keep fighting the conventional battle instead of doing this like superweapon mind control thing.

The strong implication is that the screaming USO hears while he is out piloting is the psychickers that those screams are emanating from the Angel Halo. I was wrong about the screaming USO hears on rewatching the episode. I see that it's right after he's. Destroyed a whole ship, so I suspect. It'S the screaming of everyone aboard. Maybe that's the end of the talk. It would be a good place to end. But I do have a couple more things I want to point out. Oh, no. Sa.

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